How To Be A Modern Marketer In The Age Of Data And Analytics

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Modern marketers have what seems like an ever-changing and highly demanding role in today’s B2B world. There are big challenges to address - including ABS (Account Based Selling), the role of analytics, and application of AI. For this episode, Bernie invited Victor Belfor SVP of Channel Sales and Business Development at Conversica to describe what he’s seeing in his interaction with CMOs and marketers across a variety of industries.

From his seat as a business development exec at a marketing tech company, Victor is exposed to marketers across many companies. That means he’s got a strong read on the pulse of the modern marketer. Victor calls it like he sees it and offers suggestions you can use, on this episode.

This episode is brought to you by CONVERSICA: AI software for marketing and sales that fosters real conversations to discover the most qualified sales opportunities. You can find out more at http://Conversica.com

Today’s CMOs Have The Most Integrated Role In The Company

It’s not easy being the Chief Marketing Officer at a company today. That’s because digital channels have blurred the lines between marketing and sales. Modern marketers are tasked with producing results for multiple stakeholders within the organization, which requires additional expertise. They also have to integrate with product marketing, tie directly into sales, and adapt to ABS (account based selling), and more. Top all this off with the reality of reporting directly to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or the CEO in many cases and you see why it’s a tall order for anyone.

Victor Belfor says the role demands a person who is willing to embrace the new mindset of modern marketing along with the toolsets and apply different tech stacks to produce the results the company needs. But more than anything, the CMO MUST have the passion drive and grit to be a marketing evangelist who can shape company culture to embrace and support the new role that marketing plays in the digital economy. Join Bernie and Victor as they discuss how marketing professionals can adapt to their ever-expanding role, on this episode of Social Business Engine.

How To Cope With Marketing Difficulties Caused By Increasing Analytics

Better analytics is undoubtedly a good thing. Every business needs to know the data behind what is working and what is not working. But the ever-growing tech stack is producing challenges too. How do you take flows from all the tech stack solutions and interrelate them to produce a coherent marketing plan that is data-driven? How can marketers measure what really matters to the business? That’s an important thing to nail down, but it’s not the only challenge.

There’s also the plethora of channels from which leads are coming in - events, webinars, social media, field marketing, PPC, SEO, and even from employees. How do you run cohort analysis and how do you track attribution from all these unique sources? How do you track costs? A good tech stack can start chipping away at it, but it also requires consistent effort to change company culture to embrace marketing’s expanded strategic role in the organization. In this podcast conversation, you’ll hear Victor share what he’s seeing marketing leaders do to address these challenges.

Can AI Solve The Problems of Modern Marketing?

AI has grabbed a lot of attention - and you might be tempted to say that AI is - at least in part - what is putting the pressure on modern marketers. But Victor is convinced that AI is not the cause of the marketing chasm. He says the problem when it comes to AI is that while many are interested in experimenting with AI, they are leary either because they don’t know how to use it properly or are feeling threatened by it. They want to experiment but are not completely certain if the outcomes of using AI will be better than what they are currently doing.

Hearing this, Bernie asked if marketing leaders should be doing experimental, low-risk AI trials to become familiar with its benefits. But Victor says dipping your toes into the water of AI may not be the best way to get started. Why? Because with AI, the larger your dataset or time of use, the better your results will be, which in turn will give you a better idea of how AI can benefit your marketing efforts. You simply can’t accomplish that with a short-duration test, or a small dataset. You can hear what Victor recommends instead, on this episode.

3 Specific Use Cases For AI Implementation For Marketing

Victor says there are three primary areas where AI can benefit the modern marketing approach…

#1 - Analytics - AI allows you to build models, predict what your best customers will look like, and analyze your pipeline to anticipate what deals are most likely to close - and all this is done without human bias or false assumptions.

#2 - Recommendations - AI can suggest topics for sales conversations by analyzing a variety of data sources (social media, email, CRM contacts, etc.) to help you move prospects toward sales conversations.

#3 - Conversational AI - AI-powered bots can reach out to prospects, start conversations, and get as much as 20 times the ROI a human can, and can do it at scale because unless humans, AI conversationalists never call in sick.

These are just some of the ways AI can address the needs of the modern marketer and you’ll hear Victor expand on them in this podcast conversation. Tune in. Share it with a friend.

Featured on This Episode www.Conversica.com Victor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorbelfor/ Victor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vbelfor VictorB (at) Conversica.com Outline of This Episode [0:43] The insights Victor has to share about the challenges marketers face today [5:04] Two culprits that make analytics a difficult thing for marketers to handle [8:34] What is the role of AI for the modern marketer? [15:26] Use Cases where AI may be best used for modern marketing [23:56] How conversational AI can be scaled beyond any human marketing attempts [27:18] Why the marketer is the most integrated role in the modern company Resources & People Mentioned This episode is brought to you by CONVERSICA: AI software for marketing and sales that fosters real conversations to discover the most qualified sales opportunities. You can find out more at http://Conversica.com Einstein: https://einstein.ai/ Recent Episode with Basile Senesi of Fundbox: https://vengreso.com/blog/fundbox-ai-human-great-customer-experience-basile-senesi The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine https://www.facebook.com/socialbusinessengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://instagram.com/bernieborges https://twitter.com/sbengine

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This podcast originally appeared on Social Business Engine